Clan Jade Falcon vs Kurita

Today we piled into Mark’s new and improved garage. He’s spent an insane amount of time doing up his garage, with wall cabinets all along one side to house all his toy’s and terrain. A couch and good size coffee table on the other side. It’s now a gamers paradise.The only thing missing at the moment is the beer fridge, which I’m sure will eventually turn up :-).

We ran our first game using Battle Values, After a little bit of messing around we ended up  with Mark and Paul running a lance each of 4 Mech’s versus my 4 Clan Mech’s. It wasn’t until I added the points up as I was writing this that I saw I was running over 1000 points more.

The table setup was a large city with a river running across one end and a forest on the far side of that. At the other end of the table were two power plants, which were my objectives to destroy. (Mark’s Blog with a good overview pic of the table)

The deployment was the Jade Falcons coming into the city from the forest edge while House Kurita took the Power Plant edge.

Clan Jade Falcon     8272
Loki Prime                       2196
Loki A                                1651
Thor Prime                     2306
Thor A                              2119             

Kurita                       7196
Trebuchet                          864
Dervish                                868
Catapult                              1165
Whitworth                           771

Vindicator                         900
Panther                               664
Dragon                                952
Quickdraw                       1012

The first round I came in from the forest edge over the bridge so I could get into the city for some cover. The other guys moved up, jumping onto buildings and manoeuvring into positions to take me in there crossfire. I then split my Lance to two, one Loki and one Thor to go for the each objective. 

After a massive exchange of fire power between one of my Thor’s that jumped onto a building and Pauls Catapult which was already sitting on top of a building. Both Mech’s fell over. Unfortunately for me I fell forward off the building which resulted in the destruction of both of my Gyro's, end’s that Mech’s game

On the other side of the board I had also jumped onto the rooftop with my other Thor, and the following exchange was a whole lot of nothing as we were to close for all our big guns. Then  after losing initiative, I got completely surrounded when I jumped back to the ground.

After my Thor fell to it’s doom, I moved my lone Loki into some cover from the Kurita Mech’s on the roof and unloaded everything I had to try and reduce at least one Mech to rubble. Unfortunately the following barrage of missiles and my already hot Mech meant I had to use my Anti-Missile system to try and avoid total destruction, but  totally overheated. My Mech shutdown on me and I was a sitting duck. Which didn’t take long before my ammo case was hit and I vaporised.

With two Mech’s out of the game I changed tactics and went for a run at the power plants ignoring everything and just tried to get some cover while blasting away at the power plants. This worked for the first power plant although as I took alot of damage on the Thor in the process, then the Loki with it’s LRM20 came in to finish off the first power plant. (80 Building points later)

After that it was a running game to get into position to blast away at the final power plant. With no armour left on the Thor and taking critical hits all over the place I got the final shot off to destroy the objective and win the game.

Overall a really smooth game, as we have got the basics down pat, and starting to bring in some of the more complex rules. Along with Mark’s awesome table setup it made for an awesome game.

Battletech–Evening up the odds

After playing a couple of games now and getting the taste for Battletech again, I’ve gone and got the Total Warfare and Tech Manual. (I’m going to do a review on the books in the near future) I started to look into battle values, so we can even up the odd’s in the games. As I’m building a Clan force (Jade Falcon) which out gun’s the same tonnage Mech’s and if we get into a campaign game we need to make it much more balanced. Using the battle value mechanic will even out our next games alot. I found this cool site with the Battle Values of all the base Mechs, which made it nice and easy for me to create some labels.

http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/troll/584/btip/btukbv.htm

I’ve made up some small labels that  I’ll past on the bottom of every Mech’s base to make it nice and easy to know what Mech is what and their battle values.

Here’s a base, it’s a 35mm Hex base from Gale Force Nine, they are laser cut so nice and sharp looking and best of all they are cheap. It’s actually a little large (about 2 mm) than the hex’s on the Battletech boards that come with the starter box set. I bit of a mistake by me, but since we don’t use the hex boards it’s not a problem anyway.

Photo Challenge : Part II

Well I got busy and have been playing some more, my first attempt a mussel flash, not great and I can do better. Still a good start I think.  Used another YouTube video to do this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx0AJYimURA

Photo Challenge

After seeing some very cool photos of mini’s that had some Photoshop work done on them to bring them  alive, I’ve decided to have ago myself and see what I can come up with. I found lots of how to’s and tutorials online. So I snapped off this pic of my unfinished Hunchback and gave him a laser beam…yes, yes, I know it’s an auto cannon. But hey, not bad for my first go at this type of stuff in Photoshop.

Soviet T34/85’s

With the weekend coming up and having to work through, I managed to get a couple of hours off today. So I started on my FoW tanks, a whole bunch of T34/85’s I swapped with Mark (from http://kiwi-colour-studio.blogspot.com/).  With me being a complete nube at FoW, I thought I’d keep the paint scheme simple and go with something similar to the Flames of War web site.  A little boring I know, but start out simple and go for the more complex once I get the hang of these little tanks. I am so glad I bought my airbrush back at Christmas. It’s been the greatest  investment, painting these entirely by hand would send me insane.

Picture below from - http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=373

Rules Overload

Talk about a brain overload on rules. On Saturday we rolled out another game of Battletech, followed by a game of FoG, then a game of Malifux. Then to finish off the day with another round of FoG. So the brain is a little blurred with rules. But it was a lot of fun, getting in 4 good games and mixing them up made for a great day, although a little brain bending.

The Battletech game went off really well, with the stat sheets for the Mechs all laminated now, it made for a much nicer and quicker game with less time spent running the paperwork. It was a three way game between Mark, Chris and I. The initiative roll really played it part in this game, and I was on the end of it on countless times. We slugged it out for the first few rounds, with all of us doing a little bit of run and hide jockeying for the best position. I got shot to bits in the back after losing the initiative and tried to get into some cover, but Chris had his revenge and hit my internal ammo three times, completely obliterating the Mech . Then Mark and Chris slugged it out for another few rounds before Chris took down Marks Mech.

The two FoG games I rolled out my New Kingdom Egyptians up against Chris's Chinese Jin. I managed to completely botch my deployment on the first game leavening two battle groups basically stranded for the game. I was severally beaten in that game. In the second game my deployment was much better but my dice rolling was ludicrously bad, and against Chris’s hand of God rolling 5’s and 6’s at will, I had no chance. I don’t think I even managed to get 1 point off him in that game. ….back to the drawing board, I really need to work out how to use the light chariots better.

Here’s a few pictures of the FoG battle.. or should I say FoG rout.. my Egyptians got mashed in both games. They are looking rather unpainted at this stage, and none of my Chariots, are actually on the bases yet. But I just couldn’t resist playing them in a few games.

Easter Treat

More random YouTube surfing. These are great for a laugh.

Battletech – First Hitout

With Mark’s Battletech Box turning up last week,  we cranked out our first game on Saturday.  Six of us taking one mech each and teaming up into three teams running a total of 75 tons per team.

The table layout was pretty simple, a wood,  couple of buildings, a hill and a lake. After a bit of fussing around to begin with since we forgot to print of the stat sheets we got under way.

Mark and Me run up the guts to get into range, Jason and Lee take up position on the hill, while Chris and Dan take a swim in the lake to avoid the long range weapons.

Mark charges up the middle towards the hill while taking obscene amounts of damage, as I head across to the lake to flush out the submerged mechs. This ends up with Chris and Dan pounding on every part of me, but nothing critical. Then  a few turns later I take out Dan’s mech as he kill’s me with a brutal head shot in the same turn.

While I duke it out with Chris and Dan, Jason and Lee continue to obliterate Mark’s armour and finally cause him to fall over. At which point Mark spends a couple of turns spinning around on the ground trying to get back up, all the while taking a beating from Jason and Lee.

With Dan and me out of the game, and Mark pretty much crippled. Jason slings out a long range shot which lands straight in the cockpit of Chris’s undamaged mech ending the  game.

Overall, the game was great  fun and I enjoyed it, a little slow. But that’s expected for our first game and it wasn’t helped with not having the stat sheets organised to start with. We didn’t use any of the heat rules in the game to keep things simple so we could focus on getting to grips with the basic rules. The next few games will be alot faster once I laminate the stat sheets so we can use whiteboard markers on them. The box set is well worth the money, cant wait till mine arrives so I can get stuck and get some of them painted up.

Egyptians on the Table

I’ve started painting my Egyptians this week, after getting them all mounted. I started out with the Nubian archers and used a black undercoat on the first base, then swapped over to using a dark grey Vallejo Air undercoat for the rest. Painting black skin has been a bit different for me. My first attempt with black and dark greys wasn’t great, so I changed over to just using a Vallejo black shade, which has worked out much better and quicker when going over the dark grey undercoat. Although I think there must be a better way, so I think a little more web searching is in order.

Also today the tokens arrived from Litko. I order the set for Field of Glory a couple of weeks ago from the Litko web site, so delivery time was pretty good. The web site photo’s weren't that great as their isn’t anything to compare them with. So the picture below is of two of my Nubian Archer bases in various stages of painting. Both are light foot bases, so 20mm x 40mm with 15mm figures on them. I’m quite pleased with them, as they aren't to large , so they shouldn’t get in the way when moving the battle groups around on the table. Price wise, I think they are a smidge over priced for the amount of them, 35 in all in the packet. so that worked out at $1 each NZ including shipping. Price aside, still a great product.

Mech Warrior revival

With the upcoming Battletech resurgence I’ve got back into playing Mech Warrior 4. After playing for a couple of days from the keyboard, I was going a little insane, My keyboard skills suck and that's an understatement of the decade. So I splashed out and got myself a joystick. I had a look at a few around in the shops and read up on some reviews, I ended up going with the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. Nothing to fancy, pretty much middle of the road kind of thing since I don’t play to many PC games.

So after an hour getting the damn thing setup thanks to driver issues on my computer. I got some games in. It is so much smoother to play with a joystick, and a load more fun. I haven’t played with programing any of the extra buttons yet, but I think that will help alot with some of the other functions, like auto centre the torso on the Mech. As far as a joystick goes it’s all thumbs up for this one, although I’m comparing it to a keyboard. The base is nice and stable and the twist mechanism is really well suited to Mech Warrior. After a couple of hours of  play, my shoulder was a little sore, but that was more because of my sitting position. So loads more Mech Warrior on the cards for me in the coming weeks.

Traveling Box

After finally starting to recover from this flu that I’ve had for the past 7 days, I got around to setting up my traveling and storage boxes for my Field of Glory armies. I’ve gone for the simple and rather effective A4 hard cover storage box that some of my mates put me onto. The kind that you can get from any half descent stationary shop. Then just lined it with some anti-slip rubber matts that only cost a couple of bucks, so all up I spent about $24 on each box. I also taped my standard army list on the inside of the box for easy reference. So my Vikings have a nice new home, as do my Egyptians which I’ve also spent a little bit of time getting them onto bases.

Battletech mania

After yesterdays web surfing over Battletech stuff and then finding these videos, I’ve gone and ordered the box set. Even found my old Mechwarrior RPG book and a Technical readout book from the good old days.  So I’m on a complete Battletech buzz at  the moment.

So I’ve definitely decided to go with the Clan Jade Falcon, I found these pic’s online to get some idea’s. Really looking forward to the box arriving and getting a game or two in. I’m hoping that the game is good and as fun as I remember it.

On the new blog theme, I’ve just found that there is a problem with posting video links, for some reason it displays the html on the home page. Which is a bit of a bugger, will have to work that out at some point.

Blog Theme Change

I got a little board today, being stuck at home with the flu, so I’ve been trolling though themes fro my blog and decided to change to this one. Had to do a little editing, as it had way to many options for what I need. So this is my first post on the new theme. Still working out how to change the scrolling images.

Thought I’d throw in a pic from Battletech, to get inspired. I’m looking at the Jade Falcons as my faction.

Malifaux - The Neverborn - Lilith Gang

I finished off my second Malifaux gang this morning. with the addition of Candy. Hoping to get a couple of games in tomorrow with them.

The Viking Horde

The Viking Horde is complete. It’s finally done, a full year after I purchased them, all 800 points worth. They did spend a good 6 months in the cupboard while I was playing other war games. So I just spent the last  couple of days adding some shield transfers I got from littlebigmenstudios.com. They make a huge difference, even with having to retro fit them on, which took a bit of repainting. Really looking forward to rolling them out in a game now.

Happy Bacon

Well after several months of very slow painting, I’ve finally finished the War Hog, just the varnish to go and he will be waging war on the table. I’m rather happy with him, I' could do a little more on his arms and rust out the hands etc, but time to move on and get something else done, like the 20 odd Farrow to go with him.

  Happy Bacon all round.

The Dice Mashing Machine Eats The Leper Toad

Yes, the good old dice mashing machine. Unfortunately I was in the mash machine. I rolled out my mighty Viking horde against Will’s Roman legion, in a small 600pt game and got totally mashed. A leper toad could have rolled better than me. Not only was I rolling obscene numbers of 1’s, but Will was throwing 6’s like a God. I lined up my battle groups with the Romans to make a pretty much even fight in most clashes. So in a battle of straight out dice rolling I got fully stomped on. I mean the game was done in a hour, which is the fasted game we have ever played. I couldn’t help but laugh at my pathetic rolling, a rather quick and fun game.

Here’s a few close up of Mark’s Roman's that Will was using in the game.